I've been noticing as I progress through the game that I see different tiers of armor. For instance, in the Might tree, I used to run into Azurite armor often, then later Sylvanite, and now I'm starting to run into Prismere. I've been holding off on crafting anything until I reach the highest tier of armor and weapons.

I'd suggest going ahead and crafting with whatever you've got at the time - there are so many components in the game that you're likely to get some use out of what you craft now and what you craft later.
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agent86Feb 18 '12 at 19:05

True, but it really comes down to this... this game is already pretty easy and I don't really need the gear early to make the game easier. I really just wanted to craft some top-tier stuff for the sake of looking at my stats page and saying "Yay!" :P
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SternoFeb 18 '12 at 19:08

2 Answers
2

The base materials each come in 5 tiers. For armor, the materials are:

"Cloth" (Sorcery-requirement armor):

Cotton

Linen

Silk

Hexweave

Spiritweave

"Metal" (Might-requirement armor, might shields, non-wood weapons):

Iron

Chainmail (Armor only)

Steel

Azurite

Sylvanite

Prismere

"Hide" (Finesse-requirement armor):

Leather

Boiled Leather

Studded Leather

Trollhide

Dreadscale

There are also Wood components (Bows, Finesse Shields, Staves, and Sceptres) and Precious Metal components (Sorcery Shields).Raven's provided a list in his answer that I won't duplicate here. :)

Salvaged Primary components will always have the same stats (despite being able to find "Crude" and "Fine" versions as random loot), but secondary components may not have the same magnitude effects as the original item. For instance, you might disassemble a set of Leather gloves that had 10 defense, but get a 12 or 15 defense component from it.